Recent News

John Sullivan and Garry Talbert will be presenting “Implementing Family Centered Treatment Programs: Implementation Science and an Evidence Based Alternative for Diversion or Early Reintegration” at the 2018 COJJ Annual Conference in Baltimore on November 29.

Presentation Abstract:

This workshop will present emerging knowledge from a policy development, organization development and service delivery perspective. There will be a review of projects that demonstrates the effectiveness of this unique organization. The Family Centered Treatment Foundation (FCTF) is one of the few nonprofit organizations offering a comprehensive evidence based model that divert youth from out of home services. The organization is built as a social entrepreneurship. All proceeds from its operations are reinvested to improve implementation effectiveness and the overall social good. The Foundation’s model is also unique in that is an emergent design developed by front line practitioners over the past 25 years. FCTF has successfully implemented their evidence based practice in diverse environments with a wide range of offenders and their families. These projects have ranged from the local level to multi state initiatives. The workshop will present and discuss their approach to working with families, implementing FCT in organizations and review the outcomes their recent research project with the University of Maryland as well as the most recent research plan with the Duke Endowment.

The inaugural FCT National Conference has been announced and is now open for registration. With an exciting group of featured speakers, national leaders in attendance, and presenters from numerous states and disciplines we hope to see you there!!

The Conference is scheduled to take place October 3-5th, 2018 at the Double Tree South Park in Charlotte NC.

The Family Centered Treatment Foundation is proud to announce its collaboration as a Founding Member of the Global Implementation Society.

The Global Implementation Society (GIS) is a community of professionals who are developing and using new and better ways of providing human services (implementation practice) and who are generating knowledge about how best to do this (implementation research, implementation policy). Members represent a variety of service sectors, have different professional and disciplinary backgrounds, and are from high- and low-resource settings across the globe.

The FCT Foundation has been a continuous participant in global implementation practices including collaboration with the Global Implementation Initiative and Conferences. FCT Foundation looks to implement best practices and the latest research as it delivers the Family Centered Treatment family-therapy model to families in crisis across the country and beyond. https://globalimplementation.org/

"Congratulations! On behalf of the FFTA Conference Committee and staff, I am pleased to inform you that your proposal to present the workshop Treatment Foster Care and Home-based treatment to enable Successful Reunification has been approved for the FFTA 32nd Annual Conference: Hope, Healing and Partnership. The conference is scheduled for July 8-11, 2018 in Atlanta, GA"

The Family Centered Treatment Foundation is proud to welcome St. Croix County (Wisconsin) Department of Health & Human Services to our growing list of FCT providers! St. Croix’s leadership clearly articulates the purpose and rational for adopting FCT: “Our population needs are changing, so we are seeking out alternative resources in order to better meet the needs of our community….We have completed an exhaustive search of various evidence-based programs and it appears that Family Centered Treatment will be the best fit for us.”

St. Croix comes to FCTF with a proven track record of innovation, evidenced-based programing and dedication to meeting the needs of their community. The St. Croix FCT Team is part of a county government health and human services organization that incudes multiple departments, programs and initiatives all under one organizational umbrella. This provides the program with the unique strength of housing most systems and stakeholders relevant to FCT under one coordinated entity. FCTF is very excited to see this unique program design flourish!

The FCT Foundation is excited to announce that it has been awarded two grants by the North Carolina Department of Public Safety to deliver Family Centered Treatment services to families. The FCT Foundation will work with Pinnacle Family Services, a licensed FCT provider to deliver the FCT model to families in five central NC counties.

The awards include the ‘Alternatives to Commitment Project’ and the ‘Level II Dispositional Alternatives Project’.

· JCPC-Endorsed Level II Projects were established in 2011 to address the localized needs of communities in working with youth who are deep in the juvenile justice system and are at high risk for reoffending.

· Alternative to Commitment Projects were created at the direction of the General Assembly in 2004. This funding source allowed Juvenile Crime Prevention Councils (JCPCs) to establish community programs for youth who otherwise would be placed in a youth development center.

The FCT Foundation is excited to announce that Executive Director Tim Wood was a presenter at the 4th Global Implementation Conference on June 21, 2017 in Toronto, Canada. The FCT Foundation has presented at all GIC conferences to date and is excited to continue its collaboration with the GIC.

Topic title: Large Scale Cost Effectiveness; A Not for Profit Purveyor Model

Congratulations to all the 2017 graduates! Especially to these current or future FCT Clinicians:-Eboni Moran & Daja Mayner @ Support Incorporated in NC-Jacqueline Richards @ Communities for People in RI-Jeanne-Marie Hogan @ Child & Family in RI-Keisha Martin, Brad Herring & Konje Byron @ The SPARC Network in NC

Presented at the International Academy of Law and Mental Health¹s 35th International Congress on Law and Mental Health, Prague, Czech Republic.

The study is designed to understand the experiences and perceptions of service providers who provide Family Centered Treatment (FCT) to juvenile court-involved families. The study will explore the experiences about the level of comfort and skill in working with traumatized youth, the procedures they use to assess for trauma, the adaptations they make to existing services in the cause of trauma, and their perceptions of the success of these efforts.

We will randomly select service providers from clinicians currently or historically providing Family Centered Treatment (FCT) to juvenile court-involved families, and randomly select supervisors of these workers. We will use stratified random sampling to achieve some representation of each site (approximately 10 sites) in which FCT practitioners serve this population. Interviews will be audio-recorded and transcribed, then coded to identify themes. All eligible providers who agree to participate will be included in the study. No group assignment will occur.

Many youth who come into contact with the juvenile justice system have a history of traumatic experiences, including child abuse or neglect, sexual victimization, or experiencing or witnessing assault. Service providers in juvenile justice have become more aware of trauma history and its potential role in both response to services and outcomes (such as re-offending) following services. Therefore, service providers have taken steps to both better identify youth with trauma histories and adapt their services for youth with trauma histories. Largely absent from existing literature is exactly how these identification and adaptation processes have occurred and how prepared providers are to work with traumatized youth. This study will generate exploratory data on these processes and seek to describe the current state of practice with traumatized court-involved youth receiving a particular set of services, Family Centered Treatment (FCT).

This study has the potential to promote better understanding about how the service providers identify youth with trauma histories and adapt their services for youth with trauma histories. It may have implications regarding best practices for work with traumatized youth in the juvenile justice system.

The FCT Foundation was established in 1992 under the name FamiliFirst. 2017 will mark 25 years of working with families in crisis. We are excited to hit this incredible milestone and look forward to many more years of service.

Check back in with us to hear about how we will be celebrating!

Members of the FCT Foundation attended the 2016 NC Counsel of Community Programs Conference in Pinehurst, NC. Numerous presentations were cited regarding the Family Centered Treatment model. If you attended we would love to connect with you!